


Seven of Cups

by Frankincense and Dunmyrrh (rawrawrawr)



Series: The Querent [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawrawrawr/pseuds/Frankincense%20and%20Dunmyrrh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Temple of Mythal and approaching the eve of the final battle with Corypheus was not precisely when Dorian wanted to have a discussion about his plans for the future.  Then again, when have things ever gone his way?  The continual shift of his priorities may in fact bear further discussion with the Inquisitor than he'd thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven of Cups

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly spawned in response to feeling that the post-Temple of Mythal discussion with Dorian didn't have enough depth to it. It was also a great opportunity to examine Dorian's thought processes.
> 
> Please let me know if you see any inconsistencies or errors, as I haven't written in a long while. Other than that, I hope you enjoy!

He finds the Inquisitor, of course, in his quarters.  It is one of few places Lavellan may disappear to that assures him a modicum of isolation.  Oftentimes, Dorian finds, the Inquisitor goes elsewhere to ensure that he is truly left alone.  His quarters are a transient area of privacy, although he imagines the Inquisitor feels them more to be neutral grounds—a place he sleeps and makes a mockery of living in, where others can readily reach him, knowing it is business only that keeps him tethered to such a place.  The desk in the corner is but a reminder of that.  At one point he had confessed that he enjoyed the accommodations, but could never quite grow comfortable in them, as if they would never feel truly to be his own no matter how he tried.

A good a sign as any, Dorian supposes.  If the Inquisitor didn’t wish to speak with him, he would have gone elsewhere.  He had quickly learned that Lavellan was as good at hiding secrets from others as he was at hiding himself bodily.

The elf is sitting on the chaise they both favor while reading as the human enters.  He stood without Dorian announcing himself, folding his arms behind his back.  Formality.  Great.  Dorian sighs.  “Galenhel.  It seemed, after our last conversation, that you weren’t quite content to let it slide.  Very well, then.  Let’s hear it.”

He inclines his head, blinking slowly at Dorian.  “Yes.  About that.  I have…had time to think, about what you said.  I wished to tell you—”

Dorian really has no interest in hearing the Inquisitor snap at him, not about this.  Just the idea of arguing about his potential departure is exhausting.  “Is this the part where we make it up to one another?  I do quite like that part about our fights.”

“Not quite, I’m afraid.”

“A pity,” Dorian huffs.  “You shall have to make it up to me some other time, then.  Preferably before Corypheus comes knocking down our doors.”

A raised brow is his response, the cunning eyes of the Inquisitor calling him out on his attempts to deflect with a pointed glare.  The effect is rather ruined by the way his lips twitch.  “Please, Dorian!  This is rather more important than satisfying your libido.”

Dorian waves a hand dismissively.  He knows that expression means there’s no dodging the subject.  It is rare that they ever do so when Galenhel has something to say, anyway.  He steels himself for the impending storm with a sharp intake of breath through his nose.  “Few things are, but if you must persist, I suppose I shall have to listen.”

Galenhel shakes his head, the smallest of smiles gracing his lips.  It was the same faint expression Dorian has always adored.  How could something so subtle, so subdued, positively scream of its wearer's affections?  When Dorian first noticed that the smile was not quietly bemused but quietly admiring, well, it had come to replace even the lopsided grin his Inquisitor would sometimes give as his personal favorite.  This smile made his heart stop, the sheer amount of affection in Galenhel's eyes overwhelming.

"About your leaving.”  It is impossible to see with his hands folded behind his back, but the undercurrents of Lavellan’s voice suggest to him that the elf is wringing his hands nervously.  “I know what I said, and I refuse to apologize for it.  I was being honest with you when I said I wanted you to stay.  I still feel the same.  But now that I’ve had the time to think about it, I realize that I was less than fair with you.  All I wished to say is, well…it's okay, Dorian."

With just those words, Dorian deflates.  He feels the cresting anxiety and the crushing guilt at seeing his amatus' reaction to his future plans, this strange and apparent acceptance from a man that rails tirelessly against fatalism.  _I've never been the one to leave in a relationship_ , he thinks.  As easily as he'd worked himself up into this fit, it disappears, and in that sweeping departure left the sharp, defensive words he’d meticulously prepared in the off-hand instance of a fight.  Without them Dorian isn’t sure how to proceed.

When Dorian does not respond, Galenhel's smile peaks on one side, a show of good-natured amusement.  Likely he finds it funny that he's thoroughly confused a man who claims to be so clever.  "Although I won't pretend I'll be happy to see you go, what matters most to me is that you're happy.  If Tevinter is where you will be happiest, then by all means do not let me stand in your way."  Then, more quietly, "I won't keep you.  Not if it means you'll resent me."

Dorian scoffs.  "Resent _you_?  Perhaps your horrid taste in outerwear or your constant need to drag me along as you commune with nature, but never you, amatus."

"You would," Galenhel says it softly, looking away with an inaudible sigh.  There is that typical assertion hidden beneath his words, lurking just below the surface.  Dorian knows from experience, has been stung by it before, that the elf may not always sound precisely like he is forceful.

He also knows that this is not a ruse—it is his natural state of being, that careful control of his temper locked down and repurposed into a tool.  It is the reason so many trust and believe him.  Dorian often finds that he envies the Inquisitor's ability to transform his vices into virtues.  "Perhaps not right away, but you would.  You would start to wonder what you could have done had I not held you back.  If I hadn't been so selfish."  Other times, like now, it was a source of frustration.

He draws his brows downward, hating the truthful potentiality behind such a statement.  It was all well and good to claim that would never be the case, but he couldn't know, now could he?  And, quietly, he began to wonder if that would be the case.  His nose scrunches up as he speaks, words perhaps harsher than he had intended.  "You seem awfully sure of the failure of our relationship, don't you?"

The elf shakes his head, leveling a defiant gaze that meets Dorian's eyes.  His anger dissipates once again but he refuses to let Lavellan know this.  "It would not be failure, but dysfunctionality.  I couldn't live with myself if I hurt us like that, Dorian."  Although his first set of words are sharper, the threat of fury ever lurking beneath the horizon on his tongue, he follows them with a softer set, one confession in apology for a temper Dorian has never blamed him for.  "You deserve to be happy.  There is only so much of that I can give you.  At some point, I will stop being enough.  Of that I am certain."

And because, _of course_ , Galenhel would fail to mention himself in all of this, Dorian growls, "What of you, then?  Should I expect that our relationship will crumble while I'm gone?"  He turns bodily to face Lavellan now, glowering down at him.  "Would you not come to resent me, too, if I left for Tevinter?"

"Of course not."  Galenhel seems stunned by the suggestion.

"Not at all?”  Dorian scoffs.  It isn’t that he doubts the Inquisitor—on the contrary.  He’s quite aware of Galenhel’s disgusting ability to use sense and reason to sort through emotional turbulence.  Rather, he is bothered by the implication of such a statement, as though he is somehow a lesser creature that will poison anything he touches if not given exactly what he desires.  “How are we so different, then?  Would you care to explain?"

Galenhel bares his teeth, draws his thick brows into a fearsome glower that has long lost its effect on him.  "Because at least you get a choice!"  _Well_.  That hadn't been the reaction Dorian had expected.  The Inquisitor lets out a huff, shoulders still tense with barely-controlled rage.

He turns away, paces toward the stained glass windows near his desk.  As he reaches them he is bathed in the brilliant light of the Inquisition's eye, ever-vigilant, casting its baleful gaze of bloody reds and midnight blues upon the man.  He gestures with the Fade brand to the window directly in front of him, looking over his shoulder at Dorian as he does so.  " _This_?  I never wanted _any_ of this.  And it seems at every turn, each attempt to escape to a life I would choose for myself, I am thwarted.  The only way I leave this office behind me is in a grave," he spits the last part with far more venom than Dorian is comfortable with.  He does not apologize despite his lover's visible flinch, but continues in a somewhat more restrained tone, "I was deprived of choice from the moment I touched that orb, Dorian.  From the very day I was set down this path.  For you, at least, there is one.  I won't take that from you.  I _cannot_."

Dorian comes forward slowly, until he is close enough that he could rest his chin atop the other man's head.  He doesn't reach out, doesn't say anything at first.  Just waits.  Galenhel's eyes lose that distant look, the furious thunder rolling off into the distance, plaguing other pastures.  "A choice, you say.  What if I chose to stay?"

His answer is an inelegant snort.  _Charming_.  Truthfully he _does_ find the sound charming, but he is more worried as to when he began to think so.  "You complain daily of the numerous faults Skyhold has, real or imagined.  What grace of the gods could keep you here?"

He swallows, willing himself to force the words out, to just _say what he means to_.  _Maker,_ he thinks with a sigh, _you'd think this would get easier!_   "You."

Galenhel's eyes widen.  There is a moment of deafening silence between them, where all Galenhel can do is stare at him, and all Dorian can do is pointedly avoid looking at his lover as he wills his nerves to relax and his instincts to stop screaming at him that he's said too much.

Then, quietly, his amatus speaks.  "Me?"

There is some frustration with this response, at least, and Dorian knows what to do with _this_.  He sneers, no conviction behind the expression or the words he spits.  "Yes, you.  Imagine that!  It must be exceedingly difficult for you to grasp that people care even a whit about you.  What a sad, deluded world you must live in."

"Dorian," Galenhel warns, narrowing his eyes a margin.  He is modest enough to bow his head in agreement that, yes, even if he hadn't meant those words exactly, the tone was uncalled for.

"Wasn't it you that taught me we all have choices?  It shouldn't be such a stretch to imagine that I might _choose_ to stay.  Gale...amatus, listen to me, because I am only going to say this once," he runs the backs of his fingers across the silken skin of Galenhel's sharp jaw, a stark contrast to his own.  Dorian's thumb finds its rightful place tracing the plain of a marked cheek, stroking tattoos the color of tanned hide and the line of a scar like a mountain range cutting a path across it all.  He loves this land most of all, his home away from home.  A smile blooms unbidden across his face and the stern tone he'd attempted to keep disappears along with it.  "If I leave, it is not for lack of caring about you.  At this point I'm not certain I could ever stop.  Equally so, then, should it follow that if I stay, it is not for lack of caring about Tevinter.  I can find other ways.  But if I decide to stay, it is entirely of my own volition, and there will be no one to blame in the future but myself.”

It takes great effort to bite off the words he wants to add at the end— _for being too weak to leave you_.

The still small voice in his head reminds him of a simple truth that has taken him a long time to accept.  _Love is not a weakness._   He wonders if he should be worried that his conscience has begun to sound suspiciously akin to Galenhel.  In a way Dorian supposes that is fitting—who has reprimanded him and made him feel most like a fool more often than the Inquisitor?

Galenhel looks at him, those bright hawk-like eyes searching his face, as if attempting to parse out the truth in Dorian's statement.  All at once his amatus relaxes, pressing into Dorian's hand as his eyes slide shut, a small sigh gusting across Dorian's neck.  As they fall into an embrace, the way they cradle one another a familiar comfort, Dorian's hands stroke along the elf's back.  And though Galenhel is shaking, he says nothing.  He simply holds him tighter and waits.

Patience is often a virtue between them—and by that, Dorian means to say that Galenhel treats him patiently and Dorian _attempts_ to do the same.  It is difficult, he quickly realized, to accept that sometimes he can do nothing at all, and harder still to wonder if a situation calls for space or closeness.

Galenhel waits for Dorian to be comfortable enough to say what he really means, to feel secure enough not to lose his concerns in a tide of pessimism and doubt.  Dorian waits for Galenhel to piece himself back to some semblance of control, to not feel in such extremes.  They both know from experience that poking someone before they're ready can oftentimes make it worse.  He has learned to love the pace at which their romance works, the languid and unhurried moments stretching out into imagined years together, doing everything or nothing at all.  Around them could be ruins or the far more preferable opulence of some summer estate and he would find himself content with their environs so long as together they power through the doldrums life offers in bulk.

If he has to spend the next three years convincing Galenhel that he loves him, then so be it.  However long it takes to repay the kindness and infinite patience with which his gentle hands held Dorian together and helped him to carry such brilliant hopes for a future he’d never been brave enough to believe possible.

Against his shoulder the Inquisitor lets out a breath.  His shaking gives way to a slackened posture, nose grazing Dorian's collarbone fondly.  It is a thank you neither acknowledge for its pointlessness.  They would thank one another endlessly if they cared to be polite each time these reassurances were given.  At some point words are useless and cumbersome things left behind in favor of mutual reciprocity.

_This is so delicate a thing,_ he had once thought.  _How can anything like this survive?_

_If you tend to a garden it grows.  Love is no different.  Raise the right sort and it will last the winters,_ the Galenhel inside his head supplies, apparently filled with infinite and experiential wisdom that he will never come to understand his possessing when they are nearly the same age.  But then, Dorian knew he had much to learn, if love and devotion were still concepts that took him by surprise.

"I love you," he says, kissing the junction between his neck and chin as clever fingers ghost over broad shoulders.

Dorian chuckles.  His heart feels fit to burst as he smiles down at his lover.  "And for very good reason!"  It isn't far to press his lips against the elf's, his smile growing to a grin as Galenhel meets his eyes and returns that show of happiness.  _Yes_ , he decides as he rests his forehead against the Inquisitor's, _I love you too._


End file.
